Time behaves like a thief in broad daylight when you obsess about the past. When you dwell for too long on the wounds of your personal history, it steals your time, but that is not all it snatches from you. It robs you of your physical, emotional and mental energy, which eventually has an negative effect on your spirit. Instead of being uplifted, you feel down or worse.

Initially, you might feel stressed when you constantly replay or relive the past, but an excess of stress leads to anxiety. Prolonged, untreated anxiety is a reliable pathway to depression. Furthermore, this opens the door to many various depression-related health issues. Constantly mulling over the past clutters your space because it affects every corner of your life. Your relationships, work, and self-regard feel the impact of a lack of presence when you spend your time focusing on the wounds of your personal experiences.

If you are serious about resolving the past, then the only realistic solution available to put the past behind you permanently is to seek appropriate professional help. Counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists are the only therapists who are trained to treat issues from the past that upset emotional balance and mental health. Complementary therapies can support the healing process. However, in this case, when a complementary therapy is applied without counselling therapy, it is not the whole answer. Complimentary therapies offer only one side to what may be at least a two sided or even multifaceted scenario. Complementary therapies bear this title because that is what they do: complement the healing process. If complementary therapies did more than merely complement healing, then they would effortlessly earn the right to bear a better title, but they have not. Until they do, they are destined to come second after mainstream healing.

Meditation, relaxation techniques, creative pursuits, meaningful paid or unpaid work, a balanced diet and regular exercise can also support the recuperation process. Riding the carousel of self-help workshops, to online seminars, to self-help books and back again is not the final answer. It’s a diversion tactic that your ego puts in place to distract you while your past keeps pick-pocketing its way into your future. It’s your ego’s way of making a token gesture to your soul in an attempt to shut it up for a while. It is a temporary measure. Your ego wins and your soul is the poor loser. If you tried to apply a band aid to a haemorrhaging wound, it would not be enough to heal it.

Time is a thief right under your nose when you let your past kidnap your future energy. It throws you out of the present and out of your presence of mind. Don’t let the past steal your present or drain you of your future and its unlimited possibilities.